UICCU – Can Your Financial Institution Do This?

The University of Iowa Community Credit Union recently considered changing its name to Optiva Credit Union. As a member-governed organization, a special meeting was held on 28 February 2007 to discuss and vote upon the name change. At the meeting, of the members who attended and voted, a majority chose to delay a name change – requesting more consideration and greater membership involvement in the name selection.

Member-governance is in stark contrast to some businesses and financial institutions today which are similar in operation to fascist dictatorships – with upper management making all the decisions while employees and customers simply take orders.

A credit union is refreshingly unique because the members ultimately govern and guide the institution. Today, many savvy and successful businesses, though not required to by law, will engage their employees and customers to help govern and guide the institution. This helps create a sense of collective and collaborative ownership. It’s this effective approach that is simply built-into the operational structure of a credit union. This business model is similar to how numerous telephone, electric, and grocery cooperatives operate – which is what makes them so popular.

If you are looking for a financial institution, you may want to seriously consider joining a credit union. As you probably know, most credit unions are open to all. So, despite the name of a credit union, you typically don’t need to be employed by a particular business or institution to join. Credit unions typically offer all of the financial services of a bank, and even more. They also tend to provide exceptional service.

Other details about UICCU

The UICCU ranked 12th out of 8536 credit unions nationwide!
The 2006 numbers have been released, and once again Callahan and Associates has recognized the UICCU as the leader in Iowa and among the top performers nationwide for Total Return to the Members. This measures how much of the cooperative’s profits are returned to the membership in the form of better rates on loans and deposits.

OptivaCreditUnion.org – Purchased by Resources for Life on 1 March 2007 for reasons explained further down on this list.*

University of Iowa Community Credit Union.com – Appears to be owned by Moniker.com which is a domain name squatter that purchases domain names attempting to take advantage of unsuspecting businesses, institutions, and organizations that don’t think to purchase the domain name that matches their own business name. This is a practice which should be prevented by federal law – but it isn’t. Domain name squatters typically don’t use the domain names for any altruistic end. They simply offer to sell the name to the rightful owner at top dollar, or they offer to rent the name at an exorbitant, exploitative, and unfair price. Sometimes these domain names are used for fraudulent purposes in an effort to obtain customer account information. Because the domain name is similar or identical to that of the businesses, organization, or institution, it potentially gives the squatter higher rankings on search engines than the actual organization.

University of Iowa Community Credit Union.org – Purchased by Resources for Life.com on 1 March 2007 in an effort to prevent the domain from going to a domain name squatter such as Moniker. Numerous domain names have been purchased by Resources for Life in an effort to prevent domain name squatters from exploiting those who should be the rightful owners of specific domain names. Resources for Life redirects these domain names to the websites of their rightful owners. In this way, the domain name is protected and the cost of forwarding and annual registration fees are paid by Resources for Life as a courtesy to the organization. The domain names are then available to the rightful owner for purchase at a cost of one penny. Other examples of protected domain names include: